Forward My Noble Jackals: A Decades of Darkness DBTL

karikon

Banned
The "Forward, my nobel jackals" story is a story written in the Decades of darkness universe it´s presented as an ATL story within said universe, diverging by longer live of Thomas Jefferson and no-repeal of the embargo- act. (ye It´s bloody confusing :D). The story is identical to the history of the world you the reader lives in.( you know Abraham Lincoln, Roosevelt, Stalin, Hitler). Now offer your opinion from the perspective of a person living in the Decades of darkness universe.
 
The "Forward, my nobel jackals" story is a story written in the Decades of darkness universe it´s presented as an ATL story within said universe, diverging by longer live of Thomas Jefferson and no-repeal of the embargo- act. (ye It´s bloody confusing :D). The story is identical to the history of the world you the reader lives in.( you know Abraham Lincoln, Roosevelt, Stalin, Hitler). Now offer your opinion from the perspective of a person living in the Decades of darkness universe.

IC: Okay, I'll start.

Let me just say.....wow. My uncle Patrick remembers when this trilogy first came out in 1976. I was only 6 then, and didn't actually buy the series until 1988, after I graduated high school, but I've been in love with the 'Verse ever since(also, this series is called "America the Beautiful here in the U.S.).

You may have noticed, that there's no New England and that slavery ended in 1865 ITTL instead of 1966-67 as per OTL(and with a lot less violence & bloodshed, too.). That was one of the parts that really stood. And the banning of marijuana in 1938 reminds me quite well of what almost happened in 1935 IOTL; had it not been for North California, Oregon, Illinois, and Louisiana voting no, and mainly thanks to massive amounts of Progressive outcry. the Caden-Portman Act would have passed; there was a huge amount of support for this law from the tobacco and booze industries as well as the reactionary hardcore racist right, including many Vitalists.
The only major difference here is that at least in the Caden-Portman Act, industrial hemp would still have been legal; ITTL's law didn't even have that provision.

Hitler, btw, reminded me quite eerily of Jefferson Davis Caden in some ways, particularly in the way he despised Jews, Poles, and Gypsies(or Roma).....in the same general fashion Caden began to truly hate Mexicans, Poles, Japanese(they don't call their country "Nippon" anymore), Liberians, etc., after his 1932 loss to Alvar O'Brien. Only difference is, Hitler won his election and died in his bunker; Caden was assassinated, quite brutally, in fact, by a leftist guerilla.

I also liked how the author went into depth covering the 1960s; the summer of 1967, in particular, was referred to as the "Summer of Love".......sadly, it had a totally different meaning IOTL(my aunt Diane was one of the tens of thousands of people who died due to the violence that summer. She was only 18, too. :().

And then, there's so much other good stuff, it'd take so many hours to cover it all.....

All in all, this is definitely in the range of a 1 on the Allo-Historical Plausibility Scale. Well written, unique, and there may never be another like it.....:D

OOC: Perhaps I'll write a more succinct summary at some point, but hopefully, this'll do OK for now.
 
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IC: Okay, I'll start.

Let me just say.....wow. My uncle remembers when this trilogy first came out in 1976. I was only 6 then, and didn't actually buy the series until 1988, after I graduated high school, but I've been in love with the TL ever since.

I just don't buy the later stuff, where the "Soviet Union" breaks up and even before that, the way Africa and Asia fragment with decolonization. The world's history has been the history of strong states absorbing the weak: this agglomeration of nations has been something close to an "iron law of history" and I don't see how the survival of this Jefferson fellow would change that.
 
I just don't buy the later stuff, where the "Soviet Union" breaks up and even before that, the way Africa and Asia fragment with decolonization. The world's history has been the history of strong states absorbing the weak: this agglomeration of nations has been something close to an "iron law of history" and I don't see how the survival of this Jefferson fellow would change that.

There's been some exceptions, though: We had to start pulling out of Peru, Chile, and Charcas in 1955 for instance; the rebels were getting to be too much of a pain and we had a number of serious problems to deal with at home.

And then Russia had to let go of Tibet and North China(excluding Tianjin, though) after they had their own problems.....Germany had to pull out of much of the Italian peninsula, too, after the Marxists took over North Italy and started arming the leftist groups up in occupied Venice, Turin, etc., and not to mention France as well.

OOC: The first part is canon already, btw(unless Karikon requests otherwise): https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showpost.php?p=7204123&postcount=2
 
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And the banning of marijuana in 1938 reminds me quite well of what almost happened in 1935 IOTL; had it not been for North California, Oregon, Illinois, and Louisiana voting no, and mainly thanks to massive amounts of Progressive outcry. the Caden-Portman Act would have passed; there was a huge amount of support from the tobacco and booze industries as well as the reactionary hardcore racist right, including many Vitalists.

Interesting, here in New England a lot of "Progressives" have been in favor of the prohibition of all drugs until fairly recently. We had prohibition of alcohol till the mid '40s, of course, and cocaine's been illegal here ("as opposed to Chacal decadence" the bluenoses say - apologies for their term) since the '20s IIRC.
 
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Interesting, here in New England the "Progressives" have been near universally in favor of the prohibition of all drugs until recently - they never got prohibition of alcohol through, but marijuana and cocaine have been illegal here ("as opposed to Chacal decadence" the bluenoses say - apologies for their term) since the '20s IIRC.

OOC: My apologies, but I don't see this as 100% plausible, within the context of this thread. Remember, as I posted earlier, the tobacco & alcohol companies ITTL were opposed to marijuana's continued legal status; this likely would have included many wealthy slaveowners, on top of the racist reactionaries.....and I'm sure many New Englanders would consider these people amongst the 'Jackals', and would likely be PRO-cannabis because of it. I should also point out, and this is really important, btw, that in the original TL, New England did indeed prohibit alcohol consumption, and I assume that hasn't been changed.

I do think we can work with this, though.....

IC: That was true in the Mullins era, yes. But marijuana has been legal nationwide since 1947(cocaine has been decriminalized for the most part) over there; here in the U.S., marijuana is STILL at least partly illegal in a sizable minority of states, particularly in most of the states that were part of "Plantation Country"; an uncle of mine, twice removed, served 10 years in a West Florida prison for just possessing a quarter-pound of the stuff back in the late '40s.....though, if he'd been Latino or a slave, it'd probably have been a lot worse(and if he'd been Latino, he might not have even been eligible for parole, let alone bail. At least if you were a slave, you might be bailed out by your "boss".).

At least it was never banned in the Canadian Democratic Republic.....some of the best weed around is from Sasketchewan and Cheyenne(formerly Caroline!). There's also some good stuff in Australia(re-legalized in 1960, to the great frustration of U.S. drug barons) too; just don't get caught with it in New South Wales, Kingsland or the Lesser Sunda Islands; it's still banned in these places(though thankfully the punishments aren't nearly as severe as they are in some U.S. states and Turkey).
 
OOC: My apologies, but I don't see this as 100% plausible, within the context of this thread. Remember, as I posted earlier, the tobacco & alcohol companies ITTL were opposed to marijuana's continued legal status; this likely would have included many wealthy slaveowners, on top of the racist reactionaries.....and I'm sure many New Englanders would consider these people amongst the 'Jackals', and would likely be PRO-cannabis because of it. I should also point out, and this is really important, btw, that in the original TL, New England did indeed prohibit alcohol consumption, and I assume that hasn't been changed.

I do think we can work with this, though.....

OOC: I edited some of it, but I'm going from my reading of Decades of Darkness, where the USA was fairly freewheeling about drug use (for rich white people, at least) while New England was more, well, Puritan. Don't Anna Mitchell and Diane Grant joke about that at one point?
 
OOC: I edited some of it, but I'm going from my reading of Decades of Darkness, where the USA was fairly freewheeling about drug use (for rich white people, at least) while New England was more, well, Puritan. Don't Anna Mitchell and Diane Grant joke about that at one point?

OOC: Yes, indeed, but not much is really implied by that, it seems, other than the opinions of just these two women. TBH, I've always regarded that as a a bit of an anomaly, anyhow(rich people aren't a monolithic bloc, and in fact, there have been wealthy people in OTL's U.S. who have gone against the norms; Warren Buffett, for example, has supported raising taxes on people in his economic group.); however, though, I suppose there'd be some more wealthy people who wouldn't care too much, either; IMO, though, it'd likely largely depend on their background, i.e. where they came from, their particular cultural background(Latino, Irish, WASP, French, etc.), and other things; like, for example, I'd betcha that a Latino businessman from North California would likely be a lot more comfortable with smoking cannabis than, say, an old money WASP planter from West Florida or a Virginian industrialist.
 
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